Good Question

In an article at Wire Adam Rogers asks a very good question. Is a vaccine that prevents symptoms of COVID-19 enough?

The problem is, a Covid-19 vaccine that only prevents illness—which is to say, symptoms—might not prevent infection with the virus or transmission of it to other people. Worst case, a vaccinated person could still be an asymptomatic carrier. That could be bad. More younger people tend to get the virus, but more older people tend to die from it; socioeconomic status and ethnicity also have an impact on death rates. Some people have relatively light symptoms; other people have symptoms that hang on for months. And perhaps most importantly, a vaccine is the only way to reach herd immunity without a bloodbath. As politicized as the notion has become, herd immunity is essentially the sum of direct protection—what you might get if you’re vaccinated—and indirect protection, safety afforded by the fact that people around you aren’t transmitting the disease to you because they either already had the disease themselves or because they got vaccinated against it. If vaccinated people can still be asymptomatic spreaders, that means less indirect protection for the herd.

That really matters, because there isn’t enough vaccine to go around. Not yet, anyway. Some groups of people will go first. The characteristics of the available vaccines would, in a perfect world, determine who those people should be. One that only prevented illness might go first to the elderly, in whom severe illness is more likely to lead to death. One that prevented infection and transmission might go to essential workers and frontline caregivers. “Part of our worry is, we want to get it right in the early allocation phase, making sure we’re targeting the vaccine as best as you can,” says Grace Lee, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine and a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. “If the only thing it did was protect against severe disease, you’d want to look at the population that has severe disease and only use it there, and nowhere else.”

That’s almost certainly not going to be the situation. The vaccines will probably all have some effect on transmission. But right now no one knows how much, or which one is better, or for whom—because so far only AstraZeneca has even a hint of data studying the problem.

We’re still largely operating in the dark. It makes considerable sense to know more about what we’re doing before inoculating billions of people with vaccines before we know whether they’ll actually prevent the spread of the disease or have serious long-term effects. At the very least why not wait long enough for the various studies to be published and reviewed by peers?

4 comments… add one
  • Grey Shambler Link

    A Swedish poll has 23% doubting they’ll accept a vaccine due to their experience with swine flu vaccine in 2009.
    A delayed long term side effect of which was narcolepsy.
    This is apparently fact. Add-it to the rumors and we’ll probably never get to 70%.

  • CuriousOnlooker Link

    Even inoculating the highest risk would have great benefits (like avoiding hospital and ICU overload).

    In my state, 90% of deaths and 60% of hospitalizations are > 60. If we vaccinated this age group we can reduce deaths by 80% and hospitalizations by 55%. The demographic is 16% of the state.

  • eamon Link

    Taking a vaccine that was rushed through and not knowing (or caring) what’s in it because you’ve been scared into it.

    What could go wrong?

  • Grey Shambler Link

    eamon;

    Life’s a risk, you take the shot or you don’t.
    My wife and I have COPD, she’s diabetic. I rekin we’ll take the shot, but I can’t be sure I’m right,.

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